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E-mail letters, March 2, 2010

Quoting House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-NY: “Common sense dictates that members of Congress should not (my emphases) be held responsible for what could be the wrong doing or mistakes or errors of staff.”

I always thought a boss, supervisor or employer was responsible for actions of his staff. The term is called vicarious liability. But maybe Rep. Rangel’s staff operates independently of his control. If that is true, how can we trust Rep. Rangel, as chairman, to be in control of House Ways and Means Committee?

Larry M. Head

Hotchkiss

Political correctness was lacking in letter

While I certainly appreciate anyone’s opinion, whether I agree with it or not, I do want to comment on a letter to the editor in the Feb. 28 edition of The Daily Sentinel. The writer commented that “Republican candidates running for state office do not understand the issues facing this state” and specifically used Rep. Steve King and former Congressman Scott McInnis (who coincidently has been retired from office for some time) as examples.

I can accept the writer’s obvious partisan opinions as his own, but I must take issue with one derogatory statement that Scott McInnis “is a professional politician in search of an office.” If that is some kind of parameter for disqualifying someone from running for office, the writer would have been more correct had he included all politicians from both parties.

We have 536 people plus the current President who well fit that description in Washington, plus the hundreds in this state alone. This is a case where “political correctness” should be applied.

L.W. Hunley

Grand Junction

Battlement Mesa group aims to assist residents

What does the future hold for Battlement Mesa? Do you care? The Battlement Concerned Citizens (BCC) care.

The BCC is a grassroots group of your friends and neighbors working hard, on behalf of all residents of Battlement Mesa, to address the many adverse impacts that oil and gas development in our community may pose for our lives.

Presently, we are focused on the proposed Antero drilling plan for 200 natural gas wells in Battlement Mesa, and how to mitigate the impacts to the community if it goes forward.

We have made significant progress regarding health and safety issues, with Garfield County agreeing to perform a health impact assessment and subsequent health study in cooperation with the Colorado School of Public Health, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, and the Grand River Hospital District. The HIA will be a valuable tool for use by all regulatory agencies involved in the permitting process of oil and gas development in residential areas.

The natural gas industry is hazardous, and our community deserves additional levels of protection if multiple wells are to be developed here. The BCC is taking a leadership role in protecting the health, safety, welfare and property values of the residents of Battlement Mesa. We are involved, on an ongoing basis, with various local, state and federal government agencies, to promote responsible development of oil and gas in our area and to hold the industry accountable to the people of Battlement Mesa.

If you share our concerns please get involved, stay informed! Don’t sit idly by, thinking there is nothing you can do. Join with the Battlement Concerned Citizens, and together we can be effective in keeping Battlement Mesa a desirable place to live.

Ron Galterio, Co-Chair

Battlement Concerned Citizens

Battlement Mesa

Rush’s attack on Pelosi is inflammatory hatred

As I was driving home from the grocery store recently, I heard on the radio Rush Limbaugh say that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is no different from a mullah who encourages women and children to strap on bombs to kill other people.

No matter what your political persuasion, vile nauseating lies of this ilk, directed toward the legally elected head of the House of Representatives of the United States, is naked inflamatory hatred on a par with the Klu Klux Klan, and should be denounced.

Martha Barrett Scott

Grand Junction

Medicare cuts drive more to emergency rooms

By cutting Medicare reimbursement rates to doctors, the government will make the health care issue more complicated and worse than ever before.

Medical groups cannot legally drop the Medicare patients now on their roles, but there is nothing to stop a medical group from going out of business as it now exists then re-establishing itself as a different group. A new medical group does not have to take into the practice any Medicare patient who comes to their door.

With more Medicare patients in the country without a primary-care physician, those patients will have no choice but to line up at the emergency room when they need care of any kind. If you think the emergency rooms are crowded and slow to serve the public now, the tsunami coming will be amazing. The care these Medicare patients will be seeking may not be an emergency in the true sense of the word, but it will be an emergency as far as the patients are concerned, since they will have no other choice

The cost of the years of learning and training that must be put into become a practicing physician will force many in the field to move out of primary care entirely. This kind of trickle down economics, in which medical groups go out of business and emergency rooms and clinics become overloaded, is bringing more hardship in the health care system than we have seen in the past or at the present.

Being an old economist in more ways than one, I know that if we don’t pay attention to what is going on right now, the consequences will be irreparable in the future. We will not be able to go back easily.

Beverly Kingsley

Grand Junction

Salazar’s plan is not true incremental change

The headline of Gary Harmon’s Feb. 25 article on John Salazar and what was

actually said in the article are two different things.

To take away the anti-trust exemption (ie. protection from government intrusion and frivolous lawsuits and their exorbitant expense) from our health care industry in

Colorado most certainly will change very much health care in our state.

First and foremost is the added expense to the insurance industry of defending themselves from hostile bureaucrats and personal injury parasites. There are already plenty of laws on the books concerning collusion, price fixing and “other prohibited practices,” which is bureaucratic-speak for anything they say it is.

To call this legislation ” incremental change ” is false, and only one small part of the populist game plan. It’s only incremental in comparison to the massive and incredibly intrusive take over of between 1/6 and 1/5 of our total economy by Obama-care.

Rep. Salazar doesn’t even hide what their “plan” is. He states, “I think that’s what we have to do to move things forward.” Forward meaning unprecedented control over our health are choices, including the relationship with our doctors.

Don’t believe them when they tell you otherwise. It’s in there in all those thousands of pages.

Salazar ignores the majority of his constituents at his electable peril. Start with tort reform, portability and access to coverage across state lines. Do what’s doable to cut costs first. That’s true “incremental change.”

Mark Brown

Grand Junction

Dalton Trumbo refused to turn on his friends

Gary Harmon’s recent column connecting Dalton Trumbo with the Tea Party movement contains an astounding mistake for a local reporter to make. And to anyone who actually understands the story of Trumbo’s career and the era of anti-communist hysteria, it is offensive.

Harmon states Trumbo “was a black-listed screenwriter who had been a communist and turned on his friends when the FBI came a knocking.”

In fact, Trumbo refused to turn on his friends and served time in prison for it. He eloquently stood up to a government that was trampling on rights of free speech and association — something Tea Partiers might actually admire if they looked more carefully than Harmon did.

Charles Quimby

Grand Junction

Schwartz works hard on renewable energy

I would like to acknowledge and thank state Sen. Gail Schwartz on her recent, bipartisan supported legislation she cosponsored, House Bill 1001 on renewable energy standards.

The bill increases Colorado’s renewable energy standard from 20 percent to 30 percent for investor owned utilities, and adds a minimum requirement for distributed generation of 3 percent of total retail electric sales. And all this is to be accomplished by 2020.

The new standards will create jobs for rural Colorado, promote a new energy economy, and help businesses continue to grow by an estimated 2,000 new construction jobs per year, create over $2.5 billion in economic output and power an additional 100,000 homes through renewable energy.

Sen. Schwartz also introduced two additional bills that expand upon the previous legislation to create tax incentives for small hydro, solar and wind-powered plants and to

Sen. Schwartz is working hard for a stronger Colorado while tackling the huge challenge of climate change. And amazingly, she still manages to find the time to honor her constituents. Thank you, Sen. Schwartz.

Ruthie Brown

Grand Junction

Why would police officers strip and move a corpse?

Regarding the police shooting of Brent Ingram at the Timbers Motel on Feb. 28: I find it extremely difficult to believe it is standard police procedure to move, and then strip, the corpse of a dead person before an investigation has been started.

Something stinks to high heaven in the Grand Junction Police Department.